Much of the loss was due to charges relating to the fallout from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster, but the steep fall in oil and gas prices played a big part too. Stripping out one-off charges, profits slumped by 50% to $5.9 billion. The prices of crude dropped 35% last year.

BP said, "In an ever more challenging world BP executives performed strongly in 2015 in managing the things they could control and for which they were accountable."